#13 Dreams that Hurt

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“I don’t think you are good enough for it, don’t raise your hand.”, “you shouldn’t be wearing this outfit, you don’t want people to know what you look like beneath” “you couldn’t possible step up and deal with haters, so don’t bother?” “you know what happened when you what happens when you get too close” – those voices of pain of the past.

Ever just sat there in a moment of ordinary, that you zone out to the flashbacks of nightmares. Those chapters that you try to hide away from your life that you labelled as mistakes. The ones that still haunt your past and elements of dark memories that rashes your present. That’s when you know, you are having a dream that hurts.

As humans, we aren’t perfect, and we all had episodes in life where we mishandled life situations, you took it the wrong route and you lost a part of yourself during the process. Those flashbacks haunt you because you don’t want to be that person anymore and you try to change to your very best version of yourself. I try to be as positive as possible but sometimes, I just break down by remembering those glimpses of the past where things have gone wrong and those voice talk, they aren’t from the heart neither from the head, these are the voice of the past. The ones that hold you by the grip and walk beside you, but in your eyes, they are oblivion.

There are days , I would stare at the mirror and look at myself really hard and feel like the past is all piling up again, that sense of loneliness, knowing you have a voice that you never use, yourself being judged for the way you appear and you build a character of a baggy outfit and you wear a cap to avoid eye-contact and existence itself. Realizing you don’t take photos of yourself because you forgot how to love yourself again and you glance in the sky, thinking if the past was part of me now and can I overcome this dream.

Every past has good memories and unfortunate mistakes. Such as you short-temperament, or an selfish act over a benefit, an misleading conquest over possession, lie for a win, betrayal and the list goes on. I know as humans, we wouldn’t want to admit our faults but deep down, you know we aren’t pure as we say. Why does the past decides to creep in now when you guarded it away as you moved on and believed to be a changed person?

This happens when you feel lost, when you are away of your comfort zone, when you feel that the everyone is on the train destined to achieve something great, but you feel left behind or you are driving your fate without knowing what direction you want to drive through. That’s when those dreams that hurt creep into your mind and whisper the voices that drenches your meaning. I know that feeling exactly because being a daydreamer, zoning out becomes part of your life and you just accept it. whether it brings you to happy places or sad memories, there is really no remedy to cure those dreams. A part of this is to fight it, and that’s what I try to do and that doesn’t mean eliminating your past, I mean to prove to myself of past that i have changed and I am a better person than I was before.

I can’t guarantee if I was able to convey the message perfectly because even when I write this, I have voices that say “Words are just mere Words” but to the people that fight with their past and find it difficult to talk or convey your emotions to others because you yourself are lost and don’t know if it would be silly bring the dark thoughts of the past into the present. I must say, its good to let it out, you can’t let it hide in your forever, you are in control of your life and you need to build the future that you dream to see yourself in.

The best way I overcome this issue of black memories is to remind myself of the good and appreciate the people that look out to you for the true person they see you as. My best help was a SLAM BOOK and those birthday cards and friendship collages, mostly importantly anything that signifies happiness. While I am reading my slam-book, or I reread all the comments on my work, or when I look through my history. I see the good shy me, always finding a reason to smile. And I smiled because at that very moment because, I felt like I changed for the best and everyone saw me the way you wanted to be seen. And now I say, I want to bring that smile back in me.

My slam book is filled with words of positivity and actions that I left unnoticed, but people took into account, yet, they didn’t tell me at that moment. My friends, parents and teachers saw the good in me, they supported me because they believed in me. I wasn’t afraid anymore because I didn’t feel like falling backwards anymore. Those are dreams that smile, that give to a reason to keep looking forward and not let anything get your way. Because the moment you let yourself down, you start digging your own pit of sadness and trust me, I have dug a tombstone of problems myself. But it always took me to rely on the good things to remind me that your dreams of smile are stronger medicine than the dreams that hurt. Let not your dreams of hurt consume you, learn from it and build over it. that’s how you create your dreams of smiles.

I have trained myself to understand that time is not linear. This has helped me a lot. When I draw a line and I mark one end of the line as the past and I mark the other end of the line as the future, I cannot really determine where the present exists. Therefore, I believe the past and future are the now. This has helped me in mindfulness training and overcoming where I may feel guilt or worry. You might like it.

thank you so much for the lovely advice, Jess. I just also wanted to add that as human beings, we all have to look for self-improvement and as we look and have a deep analysis of the past, we can build from that foundation a future. most importantly, the necessity is to keep looking at our future positively and getting up after falling. i am sorry for my late comment, had so much going on in my life.

Very inspiring post! There’s a line that really got to me, that one about not taking pictures of yourself because you forgot how to love you? I just realized that I NEVER take pictures of myself just for fun for the longest time, hell even my Facebook picture has been the same for more than a year. Looking back, it may have something to do with my struggles on self-love and acceptance, and it makes me relieved to know that there are people out there who understand what I’m going through. Thank you for this!